The Yoga of Breathing: More on Pranayama
by Richard Rosen
Adapted from The Yoga of Breath: A Step-by-Step Guide to Pranayama.
Lets start our exploration of the yoga of breathing by asking an easy
question: Why do we breathe? We dont tend to think much about our breathing.
Why should we? Although we can influence the way we breathe, breathing is
largely an automatic process. Why be concerned about something that seems to
take care of itself just fine, when there are so many other more important
things to worry over?
But the answer to this question is fairly obvious. Breath, as we all know, is
life, an equivalence thats been recognized all over the world for thousands of
years. For example, remember that the word prana is rooted in the verb an,
which means to breathe, but also to live and to move. In Sanskrit a
pranaka is a living being. When we stop breathing, at least for more than a few
minutes, we stop living. Im sure youll agree that this alone is a good enough
reason to keep on breathing. We breathe to take in and replenish the bodys
store of oxygen for the production of energy in the body; maintain balanced
levels of oxygen and its essential partner, carbon dioxide, in the body; and
expel waste gases to purify the body.
So the why of breathing isnt much of a mystery, but let me ask you another
question you might not have considered before: How do you breathe? Again, the
answer seems obviouswith lungs and diaphragm and nose and a few other things
that we may not be quite sure about but that were confident are working away
to keep us alive. Obvious again.
But thats not exactly the answer Im looking for. Maybe I should rephrase
the question: How well do you breathe? You might believe that we all breathe in
pretty much the same way and that it doesnt take a breathing genius to breathe
well. But in fact, each of us has a unique breathing behavior or breathing
identity. Some of us are very efficient breathers, while othersmany
othersarent. Although it may not seem that important to be an efficient
breather, inefficient breathing can have far-reaching consequences.
Breath­ing experts cite three conditions in particular that contribute to
inef­ficient breathing:
Poor posture, which might include a sagging spine and a stiff or sunken rib
case.
Weak, uncoordinated, or constricted respiratory muscles, especially the
diaphragm, our primary breathing muscle, and its breathing synergist, the
rectus abdominis.
The wear and tear of everyday stress.
How does an inefficient breather breathe? Shes inclined to breathe too
shallowly, mostly high in the chest because the diaphragm is stuck, and too
fastshe hyperventilates, which makes the flow of the breath turbulent. She
often breathes through the mouth, which is universally censured because it
reinforces hyper­ventilation, and under extreme stress shell tend to hold
her breath. Shallow, fast breathing reduces the carbon dioxide in the body,
which constricts blood vessels and slows the circulation of blood and oxygen to
the body and brain. Oxygen starvation chronically excites the sympathetic
branch of the autonomic nervous system and the fight-or-flight response. So the
heart beats rapidly or irreg­ularly, shes by turns forgetful or confused,
anxious or fearful, tense or irritable, and shes always tired and emotionally
drained or flat.
On the other side of the ledger is the efficient breather. She breathes
slowly, which streamlines the breath, with the free and easy movement of the
diaphragm, engaging the entire torso (in fact, the entire body). She mostly
breathes through the nose, which filters, warms or cools as needed, and
humidifies the breath. Nose breathing naturally slows the exhale, because the
nostrils offer more resistance to the breath than the mouth, and gives the
lungs enough time to extract the maximum amount of oxygen and energy from each
breath. With the correct proportion of oxygen and carbon diox­ide in the
body, which dilate the blood vessels, blood and oxygen cir­culate smoothly
and easily through the efficient breathers body and brain. The full excursion
of the diaphragm and the well-toned abdominals massage internal organs, like
the heart and intestines, and so improve digestion and elimination. Efficient
breathing acti­vates the parasympathetic branch of the
autonomic nervous system and the relaxation response. In all, the efficient
breather is much calmer and more clearheaded, and probably healthier and
happier, than her inefficient friend.
So how would you identify yourself as a breather? Efficient or inefficient,
or somewhere in between? Its hard to answer a question like this objectively,
especially when you might be a little fuzzy on the details of the function and
machinery of breathing, with a breathing identity thats largely unexamined.
Its not surprising that the yogis have their own ideas about breathing. Of
course, theyre interested in efficient everyday breath­ing, but theyre
also interested in something more: not only why we breathe and how we breathe,
but who is breathing.
We understand intuitively that breathing reflects consciousness and that we
can affect or influence consciousness by changing our breath. We probably do it
all the time and dont think much about it. For example, what happens to your
breath when you get angry? Speeds up, right? And have you ever tried to soothe
that anger by slowing down your breath? Probably, though its not a sure thing.
Just because you breathe slowly doesnt necessarily mean youre going to calm
down, though its a good start.
The point is, most of us dont think about the relationship between breath
and consciousness and what it means. But luckily for us, the yogis do: its
their job. Thousands of years ago, they set about methodically investigating
this relationship. They discovered that breath and consciousness are just the
flip sides of the same coin and that in order to find out who is breathing, the
first thing we need to do is ask how we breathe.
Individual Prana
Once the cosmic prana is appropriated into our body, its converted into
individual prana (vasti-prana), which has five major branches, usually called
winds (vayu), collectively known as the great winds (maha-vayu). (There are
also five minor branches, the upa-vayu, which wont concern us.) Each wind has
its own special seat in the body (except circulating wind) and works to sustain
us physically, mentally, and spiritually. Different teachers locate the seats
of the winds in different areas of the body and give them different
func­tions. For our purposes, well say that
Forward wind (prana-vayu, not to be confused with cosmic prana) is seated in
the heart and stimulates and regulates the rising energy of reaching out and
taking inthat is, appropriation or absorption. Its primary manifestation,
though not its only one, is inhalation.
Downward wind (apana-vayu) is seated in the lower pelvis and stimulates and
regulates the falling energy of elimina­tion or giving out or away. Its
primary manifestation (though, again, not its only one) is exhalation.
Middle wind (samana-vayu) is the fire in the belly, seated in the navel,
which stimulates and regulates assimilation or incorporation. Middle wind
digests the food we take in from the world (with prana-vayu, whether physical,
mental, or spiritual) and cooks it, as the yogis like to say, transmuting it
into something uniquely our own.
Circulating wind (vyana-vayu) circulates throughout our body and so has no
specific seat. Its the glue that holds us together and the network that
distributes whats been digested to every cell. Circulating wind also urges us
to openly share what weve assimilated to ourselves with the body of the world.
Upward wind (udana-vayu) is the energy of expression, appropriately seated
in the throat. Lama Govinda (quoting René Guénon) notes that upward wind is a
vehicle of the mind, namely of word and speech, and thus, in a certain sense,
the medium of an enlarged individuality.
Its worth remembering that the five winds are not abstractions and not the
preserve of just a few isolated yogis. They vitalize each of us, always and
everywhere, whether we know it or not, with intel­ligence and creativity.
Certainly, as beginning breathers, we cant be expected to immediately
distinguish among these subtle currents and put them into play in our practice
and lives. But wherever you are and whatever youre doing, it takes no
particular training to begin to feel the great currents of aliveness that
animate our body­-mind. You just need to turn your attention, for a couple
of minutes, to the movement of your everyday breathing.
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